The Story Behind These Very Strange Anti-Trump Ads That Popped Up in NYC Today

Cautionary tales indeed

Out-of-home has been a great venue for anti-Trump advertising this year, from the Nuisance Committee's clever billboards to Wieden + Kennedy's baloney-fixated food truck. Now, we can add an unpaid guerrilla campaign to that list, as some strikingly weird Donald-bashing posters suddenly popped up Wednesday on bus shelters in New York City.

There are five executions in all. Each poster is based on a fictional story—Dr. Strangelove, Dumb & Dumber, Humpty Dumpty, Thelma & Louise and The Shining.

Check out the ads below—in situ, as well as the original artwork.

The work was done by three friends—Alex Reinoso, an art director at R/GA; Alessandro Echevarria, an illustrator at Wieden + Kennedy; and Nick Elliott, a copywriter at Campbell Ewald.

"The idea basically came out of the fact that life with Trump running for president has become stranger than fiction," Elliott tells AdFreak. "So we wondered what would happen if we literally mashed up Trump and the election with well-loved fictional stories. … These are, of course, cautionary tales."

The "Doomsday Mission" poster went up 61st and Broadway, right in front of the Trump International Hotel. The others are at 5th Avenue and 23rd Street, West Houston and LaGuardia Place, 23rd Street and 7th Avenue, and 34th Street and 9th Avenue. There are also a bunch of wild postings in Williamsburg and Bushwick.

If you're in NYC, go have a look at the ads—while they last. After all, as Elliott says, this stunt was "more in the guerrilla activist art vein than paid media."